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I am co-author of a poem cycle called, "Disappearance in Greece." The cycle runs 14 pages. My fellow co-authors are Kirpal Gordon, Ernest Kroll and Carl Conover, all very good poets. We have never met each other. We never intended to co-author a poem cycle. The grouping of our poems is merely a typographical perception, and, apparently, accidental and not editorial. If you access EBSCO Host and type "Disappearance in Greece" in the search bar, you will be able to view and print the poem sequence, if you so choose.

 Originally our poems appeared in the Winter/Spring 1989 issue of Boundary 2, a journal of postmodern literature and culture (once published out of the State University of New York at Binghamton and later sold to Duke University Press). Indeed, an archivist assembling sections of the journal for presentation on EBSCO could have easily perceived these poems to be all of one piece. After an essay entitled "Criticism, Historicism, and the Rediscovery of Lyricism: Frank Lentricchia's Post-Existential Divigations" (title in bold type and followed by a thick underscore line) here comes "Disappearance in Greece: A Cycle of Poems" (title also in bold type and followed by a thick underscore line). The section appears to continue for fourteen pages and end with Carl Conover's two poems just before an art feature on "The Works of Jim Stark." My poems are incorporated somewhere in the middle.

Obviously a reader can piece out it is Kirpal Gordon's six poems at the beginning of the section that deal with Greece, and are obviously intended to be entitled, "Disappearance in Greece: A Cycle of Poems." Perhaps "A Cycle of Six Poems" would have clarified the deal. None the less, "Disappearance in Greece: A Cycle of Poems" is the only title linked to my and Mr. Kroll's and Mr. Conover's poems on EBSCO. And it is in this way we are linked as authors of a cycle.

As co-author of "Disappearance in Greece," I decide to talk a walk into Fairfield, Iowa, my hometown. It happens to be the night of a festival. Everything is Italian tonight though, not Greek.

In some century BC, a young warrior
shakes his father's hand, his mother
waves & he's off for the underworld

a casual departure to death,
even in
ancient Greek relief. I'm homesick

so over ice cream, the shouting
gypsies with the postcard satyrs
surprised from their horse erection,

I invent an image of Jack Kerouac
hitch-hiking his United States
after a world war. "It's form

we're hung up in," she tells me,
standing up, revealing nothing on
underneath: "our Greek inheritance,

a belief in containers, the will
to shape ourselves into an eternal
likeness..."

(Kirpal Gordon from "Disappearance in Greece")

Katie and I walk and walk and all we see are strangers. Strangers eating cannoli. Strangers horfing down pizza by the slice. We would like to run into a friend, but it's just not our karma tonight. A little boy, an out-of-towner, does a little moose dance in front of us, blocking our way for a few seconds. He twinkle-toes around a fire hydrant with his thumbs in his temples and his fingers extended, creating moose antlers. Moooooooooooo! he says. He makes us smile.

For us whom the world has stopped
I must reach you & say
there is a heaven

For us without belief in nation
obligation, the usual
gung-ho, settle down, get a job

I know the citizenship of despair
the homeless root grief, the wind's
bitter appeal.

Weary with the world's disasters
I have awoken in Skopoelos
to discover my mind has stopped.

(Kirpal Gordon from "Disappearance in Greece")

Walking past a newspaper vending box, I notice a picture of a pelican completely covered in oil. Some journalist, enamored with alliteration, asks what is better, to clean or to kill? We distance ourselves with language. I think the most articulate coverage of this yet has been the television correspondent who, overcome with the shear scale of the disaster, had a nervous breakdown on camera, and uttered only convulsed choking gasps.

I wonder what's to learn
in this gigantic school--

except perspective's rule
that trees and mountains sprung
between the near and far
may minimize a star--

(Ernest Kroll from "Disappearance in Greece")

It is still late spring, however, and the intense low rays of evening light illuminate everything-- hair, windows, women's dresses-- creating celestial lanterns.

The white spring light observes

my room as I left it: the bed,
unmade, splashing onto the floor's hard wood,

the Venus fly trap, the books--the few--
Greek lyrics, Williams, Faulkner, and Thoreau.

My books, how uncomfortable they must be now
that I'm away from them. I know

the shelf they're on must seem
like a hospital ward in a patient's drugged dream:

white, bare, but for consciousness
and the clean scent

of white petals drifting, tapping
against dim glass, as the day swirls trapping

grassblades beneath its serpent paths of wind.

(Rustin Larson from "Disappearance in Greece")

The next day, Caroline and I take a walk to Chatauqua Park. I know it's going to rain, but I don't know for certain how bad. It's bad. On our way back, even though we both have umbrellas, we get soaked. Lightning crashes some lightning rod or tree extremely near, for there is no delay between the flash and the boom. Caroline hastens our pace all while relating the good experiences a friend had while dying recently. He had good experiences dying. Lightning strikes nearby again, and again. I can feel my blood pressure spiking, my breath becoming short. The rain comes down in torrents. Caroline mentions some prayer about being surrounded by God's light. I am carrying a metal rod masquerading as an umbrella. We round a corner near home where a huge oak looms. Zeus send down another thunderbolt. Flash! Kaboom! I can see our porch. I run to it. I tear the door open. "Did you guys have fun?" Julia asks us, smiling.

These are questions to answer yes and no by.
It's not that you hear or understand the question--
the important thing is to answer. That is why

you were given that small electricity coursing
up and down your spine. That is why
your fingers find their way into the wrong

fire and get burned by believing in the good
too hard. And that is why when I tell you to sit,
you sit, and you look up at me

with those soft brown eyes, and wag your tail,
and hope like hell I don't leave town
and vanish from your life.

(Rustin Larson from "Disappearance in Greece")

Birds and angels are messengers. It's not important that you understand the message as much as hear it. Your body will understand. Later. A sparrow is hovering near my kitchen window like a hummingbird, but slowly. There is a nest in the low eaves, and the trusting creatures are guarding another clutch, only to flutter off when I enter the courtyard to rest on the swing or on a lawn chair, to play my guitar, or to stare into space. Birds come and go. A cardinal flies through like a red bullet. Mourning doves walk in pairs. And always the sparrows scolding, as if they own everything. I would like to think even the fat pigeons from the town square come to have a look, to deliver something on tiny scrolls of paper.

The pigeons have all flown in now, and I
have messages from all over. Here's one
from Walt Whitman, he says everything

is fine in D. C., the troops are having
their arms sawn off and yet he stays
there and reads them letters and generally

livens the drab little place up. James Joyce
is in Paris at Shakespeare and Co.
rushing the publication of that monster

book, Ulysses. Homer is blind as usual.
Thoreau goes for walks every day
straight through birds' nests, thorns, and ponds

and never manages to lose a toe
to a snapping turtle...
...And I wonder
how much blue sky I can take in now

and save for later? And will that ladder
rot, leaning on the eaves? And how many times
will I have to dig the leaves out of the rainspout,

or keep the pigeons from crying
in their cages at night?

(Rustin Larson from "Disappearance in Greece")

Everyday, bit by bit, we make plans for our disappearance in Greece. The moment of our disappearance will be when there is nothing else to be done. Athena will sleep on a bed that dissolves into mist. We will disappear behind the illusion of time itself and be everywhere forever.

In the meantime, though, I climb into bed with Caroline, and think about our checking account, and stare one more time at that cobweb drifting lazily beneath the ceiling lights.

These broken threads, swaying
in the corners of our nights
and days, secreted by what small
domestic animal who works unseen
before our eyes, entangling
our thoughts, like the game
we played as children,
connect-the-dots, the dull objects
take another shape, a wine bottle
is tied to a lamp, a mirror
to a book, and our paintings to
the ceiling. We move in the space
between them, thirsting for light.

(Carl Conover from "Disappearance in Greece)

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